General Motors emerged as winner-loser in the $789 billion economic stimulus package

General Motors Corp. emerged as both a winner and loser in the $789 billion economic stimulus package that lawmakers agreed to after ironing out differences between competing House and Senate versions.

GM won a provision that will erase a tax liability of up to $10 billion that would have resulted from restructuring efforts, said Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat.

Yet GM, Ford Motor Co. and other automakers failed to get the full tax write-offs for car buyers proposed in the Senate bill, which might have slowed the plunge in sales that has pushed GM to the brink of bankruptcy. Homebuilders such as Centex Corp. didn’t fare as well as they would have under the $838 billion Senate measure adopted earlier this week.

President Barack Obama, who this week has been stumping for the plan in areas hard-hit by the economy, is counting on the package to help revive the economy. The U.S has lost 3.6 million jobs since December 2007, and the nation’s unemployment rate has risen to 7.6 percent, its highest level since 1992.

“This is the biggest stimulus bill ever passed in the history of the country,” said Pete Davis, president of Davis Capital Investment Ideas in Washington, which provides analysis of Congress to investors.

Public Works Spending

The effects will be widespread, with individuals getting a boost from tax breaks, state governments seeing additional funding and companies benefiting from road building and other infrastructure projects in the package, Davis said. “The peak of the effects will probably occur in six to 12 months,” he said.

The package, which will be sent to the White House for Obama’s signature after final congressional approval in both chambers, amounts to the biggest burst of public works spending since the interstate highway system was started in the 1950s.

Congressional staffers were still working on the final draft of the legislation last night. The House may vote on the plan as early as today.

A proposed $15,000 tax credit for homebuyers was reduced to $8,000, Democratic Senator Max Baucus said, a decrease that may hurt U.S. homebuilders such as Centex and D.R. Horton Inc.

GM’s tax liability would have been triggered by its plan to offer equity in exchange for debt and for health-care obligations to union workers. GM, surviving with the help of $13.4 billion in pledged government loans, is making the changes in order to meet a U.S. requirement for the aid.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Baucus said about 35 percent of the stimulus plan consisted of tax cuts and the remainder would be government spending.